[usr 1.5]
After a cyber-attack reveals the identity of all of the active undercover agents in Britain, Johnny English is forced to come out of retirement to find the mastermind hacker.
Rowan Atkinson has made a career for himself playing the bumbling, lovable oaf, most notably as “Mr. Bean.” As Johnny English, he furthers his career by playing a blunderous British secret agent who always manages to accomplish his mission. Like the graceless Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) in the Pink Panther movies from the ’60s and ’70s, the Johnny English films would have been more successful had they played to audiences from that era, rather than this time. Why? Because when it comes to humor, people, in general, are more intellectually advanced. The simplistic humor and laughs one got from watching Inspector Clouseau clumsily walk into walls and fall over ledges but somehow, through sheer stupidity, always manage to save the day, was an uncomplicated time and the laughs were genuine. I think Clouseau and English would have made for a great team-up and while I give kudos to Atkinson for trying to imbue that humor today, sadly, it just doesn’t work.
Now retired from Her Majesty’s Secret Service, when British Intelligence’s MI7 is hacked and all of their agents’ identities are revealed to the world, there’s only one man who can save the day: James Bon…er, I mean, Johnny English! Stuck teaching children at a preppy school in the English countryside, he jumps at the chance to become the agent he knows he was born to be. He takes his trusty sidekick, Bough (Ben Miller) with him and the two head off to the south of France. Disguised as French waiters, English and Bough infiltrate a restaurant to try to steal the cell phone of one of its patrons, a man they presume to be responsible for the hacking of MI7 and during the mission, English accidentally sets fire to the restaurant and both he and Bough narrowly escape with their lives. They sneak aboard the superyacht aptly named “The Dot Calm,” as they believe it to be the location where the initial hack of MI7 originated from.
Once on board, they meet the mysterious Ophelia Bhuletova (Olga Kurylenko), who is not what she appears to be and after planting a tracking device below deck, English and Bough escape. Ophelia is given orders from her boss to terminate English but try as she may, his secret agent abilities prevent her from doing so. When the British Prime Minister (Emma Thompson) is told that there has been another hacking, and then several more follow, Silicon Valley tech billionaire Jason Volta (Jake Lacy) visits her at 10 Downing Street and offers to take care of England’s antiquated security systems, by offering to move them into his own personal servers. The Prime Minister agrees, fed up with the constant hacking of her country’s intelligence community and shortly after, English, after an encounter with Ophelia, suspects her of being a Russian spy. When he and Bough discover that Jason Volta is actually the person responsible for the MI7 hacks, they race back home, only to find out that the Prime Minister is going to announce to the world at the G12 summit in Scotland, that Volta will be taking over England’s security. Now English and Bough must formulate a plan to stop Volta and save England once more!
The plot is something straight out of a low-budget James Bond film but that is not why we go to see these movies, it is to see Atkinson physically perform. Or at least it used to be. Now pushing 63, Atkinson’s physical characterizations are reduced to participating in a virtual reality simulation of the mansion he and bough must infiltrate. This scene could have been hilarious, but instead, we see our protagonist push an elderly woman in a wheelchair into oncoming traffic and beat up a deli worked with two large baguettes, all while acting out a fight sequence in the virtual reality simulation. This scenario might have worked ten, maybe even twenty years ago but instead, it is just groan-inducing. Later, when English and Bough need to get to Scotland where the G12 summit is taking place, Bough calls on his wife Lydia (Vicki Pepperdine), who just happens to be the captain of a Navy submarine and she gives them a lift. Once inside the castle, English dresses up in old knight’s armor and reveals Volta’s plans to everyone at the summit. When Volta tries to escape to his waiting yacht, “The Dot Calm,” English inadvertently calls in an air strike, which blows up the yacht, courtesy of the tracker he and Bough planted on it earlier, and the world is safe once more!
The overall narrative feels redundant, with Atkinson and the rest of the cast simply going through the motions. There was only one genuinely humorous scene which involved English trying to fall asleep but to no avail. He takes out a small tube containing red and green pills, one to knock an adversary out, the other to fill them with adrenaline. Naturally, he takes the wrong pills and ends up wide awake, dancing the night away at the disco hall downstairs, and because of his manic movements, the gun of a hired assassin cannot keep up with him. If there had been more entertaining scenes like this throughout, the movie might have worked but as it is, it makes you want to put on a real James Bond film instead.
In theaters Friday, October 26th
